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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Buddhism in Asia was transformed by the impact of colonial modernity and new technologies and began to spread in earnest to the West. Transnational networking among Asian Buddhists and early western converts engendered pioneering attempts to develop new kinds of Buddhism for a globalized world, in ways not controlled by any single sect or region. Drawing on new research by scholars worldwide, this book brings together some of the most extraordinary episodes and personalities of a period of almost a century from 1860-1960. Examples include Indian intellectuals who saw Buddhism as a homegrown path for a modern post-colonial future, poor whites ‘goin...
Theravada Buddhism provides a comprehensive introductory overview of the history, teachings, and current practice of an often misunderstood form of one of the world’s oldest religious traditions. Explores Theravada Buddhism’s origins, evolution, teachings, and practices Considers the practice of Theravada beyond Sri Lanka and Thailand, by exploring a wealth of material from countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Vietnam Reveals its rich and varied traditions, and corrects common misunderstandings about links to other practices, such as early Buddhism or Hinayana Buddhism Incorporates student-friendly features including a glossary and other study aids
Consideration of children in the academic field of Religious Studies is taking root, but Buddhist Studies has yet to take notice. Little Buddhas brings together a wide range of scholarship and expertise to address the question of what role children have played in Buddhist literature, in particular historical contexts, and what role they continue to play in specific Buddhist contexts today. The volume is divided into two parts, one addressing the representation of children in Buddhist texts, the other children and childhoods in Buddhist cultures around the world. The ground-breaking contributions in this volume challenge the perception of irreconcilable differences between Buddhist idealism and family ties. Little Buddhas will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars of Buddhism and Childhood Studies, and a catalyst for further research on the topic.
Articulating the shifting interests in Korean art and offering new ways of conceiving the biases that initiated and impacted its collecting, this book traces the rise of the modern Korean art market from its formative period in the 1870s through to its peak and subsequent decline in the 1930s. The discussion centres on the collecting of Koryŏ celadon ceramics as they formed the focal point of commercial exchanges of Korean artefacts and explores how their acquisition and ownership formed part of the complex power relationship that played out between the Koreans, Japanese, Americans, and Europeans. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, the volume analyses collectors’ acquisition prac...
The Irish Buddhist is the biography of a truly extraordinary Irish emigrant, sailor and migrant worker who became a Buddhist monk and anti-colonial activist in early twentieth-century Asia. Born Laurence Carroll in 1856, U Dhammaloka defied the British Empire and missionary Christianity in defense of local culture. He had five different aliases, was tried for sedition, put under police and intelligence surveillance, faked his own death, and ultimately disappeared. His dramatic life rewrites the previously accepted story of how Buddhism became a modern global religion.
Authoritarianism seems to be everywhere in the political world—even the definition of authoritarianism as any form of non-democratic governance has grown very broad. Attempts to explain authoritarian rule as a function of the interests or needs of the ruler or regime can be misleading. Autocrats Can’t Always Get What They Want argues that to understand how authoritarian systems work we need to look not only at the interests and intentions of those at the top, but also at the inner workings of the various parts of the state. Courts, elections, security force structure, and intelligence gathering are seen as structured and geared toward helping maintain the regime. Yet authoritarian regime...
Our understanding that the Buddha emerged from the Middle Gangetic region of the Indian subcontinent has been largely unchallenged for the past 200 years. However, can we truly trust our existing knowledge regarding the geographical locations associated with early Buddhism? Could the Buddha’s origins, in fact, lie elsewhere? Tracking the general theory explaining the Buddha’s emergence from the Middle Ganges, this book explores the lesser-known story of colonial Sri Lanka’s connections to the wider nineteenth-century orientalist quest of placing the Buddha across the northern expanses of the subcontinent. By doing so, this book highlights the many flaws and inconsistencies that continue to inform our current understanding of the Buddha’s geographical origins and urges us to rethink the very foundation on which our knowledge of early Buddhism is based.
Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law offers the first comprehensive account of the entanglements of Buddhism and constitutional law in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of experts, the volume offers a complex portrait of “the Buddhist-constitutional complex,” demonstrating the intricate and powerful ways in which Buddhist and constitutional ideas merged, interacted and co-evolved. The authors also highlight the important ways in which Buddhist actors have (re)conceived Western liberal ideals such as constitutionalism, rule of law, and secularism. Available Open Access on Cambridge Core, this trans-disciplinary volume is written to be accessible to a non-specialist audience.
From its earliest days, Buddhism has been closely intertwined with medicine. Buddhism and Medicine is a singular collection showcasing the generative relationship and mutual influence between these fields across premodern Asia. The anthology combines dozens of English-language translations of premodern Buddhist texts with contextualizing introductions by leading international scholars in Buddhist studies, the history of medicine, and a range of other fields. These sources explore in detail medical topics ranging from the development of fetal anatomy in the womb to nursing, hospice, dietary regimen, magical powers, visualization, and other healing knowledge. Works translated here include medi...
A groundbreaking exploration of a practice tradition that was nearly lost to history. Theravada Buddhism, often understood as the school that most carefully preserved the practices taught by the Buddha, has undergone tremendous change over time. Prior to Western colonialism in Asia—which brought Western and modernist intellectual concerns, such as the separation of science and religion, to bear on Buddhism—there existed a tradition of embodied, esoteric, and culturally regional Theravada meditation practices. This once-dominant traditional meditation system, known as borān kammatthāna, is related to—yet remarkably distinct from—Vipassana and other Buddhist and secular mindfulness practices that would become the hallmark of Theravada Buddhism in the twentieth century. Drawing on a quarter century of research, scholar Kate Crosby offers the first holistic discussion of borān kammatthāna, illuminating the historical events and cultural processes by which the practice has been marginalized in the modern era.